Field
The subject invention relates to online sales of vehicle history reports and, in particular, to tools for increasing sales of vehicle history reports.
Related Art
When consumers make choices to purchase vehicles, they often consult vehicle history reports. These vehicle history reports include information that help the consumer make their decision to purchase a vehicle, such as the make, model, and year of the vehicle, the number of previous owners, a status identifier (e.g., accident indicator, or other negative history indicators), etc. When a dealer is selling a vehicle, the dealer often provides the consumer with the vehicle history report associated with the vehicle to assist the consumer with their decision. Some consumers are more likely to purchase vehicles from dealers who provide vehicle history reports, and consumers are more likely to purchase vehicles that have favorable vehicle history reports (i.e., no accidents, few previous owners, etc.)
Dealers get these vehicle history reports from a service that specializes in generating vehicle history reports, such as Carfax which can be accessed at carfaxonline.com. To order vehicle history reports, dealers individually enter each VIN for each desired vehicle, such as specific vehicles in their inventory, to obtain each vehicle history report from the service. This process is cumbersome and dealers, thus, often fail to order reports. Dealers also have little guidance as to how to prioritize report purchases if they prefer not to purchase vehicle history reports for every vehicle.